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University of Massachusetts -Boston
Capstone Synthesis Project
Master of Arts
Critical and Creative Thinking
May, 2016
Myra Williams McWethy
Two Years ago at my place of Work…
A professional company,
running on a multi-million dollar annual
budget…
Why would a person
make a decision to
do such a thing?
To search for answers, I looked into…
Humanities
Religion
Sociology
Psychology
History
Communications
Anthropology
Biology
The Findings of my Initial Search: • Strategic Decision Making Michigan State College of Business
• Quantitative Analysis: Decision Making San Diego State University Economics
• Principles of Autonomy and Decision Making MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics
• Problem Solving and Decision Making Central Piedmont CC Business
• Decision Making and Problem Solving FEMA Independent Study
• Thinking, Judgment, and Decision Making Swarthmore College Psychology
• Problem Solving and Decision Making South Texas College Business Administration
• Global Business Leadership Ethics University of San Diego School of Business
• Decision Making Under Conditions of Uncertainty Yale University School of Management
• Decision Making Models for Managers UC San Diego Rady School of Management
• Foreign Policy Analysis USC School of International Relations
• Strategic Planning and Decision Making New England College of Business MBA Capstone course
• Legal Environment of Business University of Texas College of Business & Engineering
• Organizational Theory and Behavior Rockefeller College SUNY Albany Public Affairs & Policy
• Leadership and Decision Making Harvard University Government
• Medical Decision Making University of Illinois Department of Medical Education
• Mathematics in Decision Making University of Northern Iowa Mathematics
• Marketing Strategies and Decision Making University of Georgia Terry College of Business
• Sex, Health, and Decision-Making University of South Florida College of Public Health
• National Security Decision Making U.S. Naval War College
• Effective Problem-Solving and Decision Making University of California at Irvine Business
• Thinking and Decision Making Columbia University Department of Psychology
• Ethics and Values Northwestern University Part of Freshman Seminar
• Introduction to Public Administration Bradley University Political Science
• Introduction to Resource Economics UMASS-Amhurst Dept. of Resource Economics
• Think Critically: Effective Decision Making in Business UMass-Boston Corporate & Professional Development
Philosophy options… • Judgment and Decision Making
Loyola University, Chicago (Psychology, investor, medical, etc. emphasis)
• Discernment and Christian Decision Making College of St. Benedict
• Moral Values and Ethical Decisions Mount Saint Mary’s University
• Ethical Decision Making University of Denver Case Studies
• Probability, Data and Decision Making Ohio State University Department of Philosophy
• Ethical Decision Making Stanford University Emphasis on Drafting Ethical Code
• Conflict Resolution UMass-Boston Decision Making is a Master’s Degree “Skill” that’S expected in the course “Learning Outcomes”
The closest… but still 90% Lecture
• Critical Reasoning Elmhurst College, IL PHL 106 – This course provides the fundamentals of reasoning
necessary for academic and everyday life.
– The course will examine informal fallacies, rhetorical devices, induction and deduction, argument analysis, argument construction, the writing process, problem solving and decision making, the scientific method, and traditional syllogistic argument forms to assure that students are well equipped for understanding and formulating arguments concerning crucial issues in their educations and lives.
Philosophy
I “met” these people, and tried to understand the wisdoms gleaned thought Philosophy, Socratic Thinking, and the rational search for truths…
• I Googled Five Words
“philosophy critical thinking masters creative”
What can I do to help set a better “base line” for decision making?
To outline a totally original college course that
would allow students to practice solutions to
everyday decisions so there would
be far less Really Rotten Incidents in the world...
I had created and taught writing classes in the past at:
College of DuPage
Waubonsee College
Kroch’s & Brentano’s Bookstores
University of Wisconsin – Madison
Various writers conferences around the Midwest.
My Foundational Question:
Why put together a class in
“Philosophy and
Making Better Decisions”
for college
freshman/sophomores?
• The $$$ Answer
Employers want employees
with sensible overall decision-
making skills.
The Millennial Answer
• The Media / WWW Answer
The Balanced Life Answer…
The Deeply Human Answer…
• Justice
• Family, Love, Relationships
• Communication Responsibility
• Dealing with reality.
I found out that most people CRAVE to Talk About Life’s Decision Issues!
• Beyond the pro/con lists
• Beyond the “Well, it’s up to you,” brush off.
• Beyond the “Black and White.”
• Beyond the “Our ___________ say it is so.”
• Beyond the “It’s just ________ to do nothing.”
• Beyond the “It’s all about ME.”
• Beyond the groupthink mentality.
• Beyond the loneliness of tough decisions made alone.
• Start Date: January, 2015
• CCT 615 Holistic & Transformative Teaching
• CCT 612 Seminar in Creativity
• CCT 618 Collaboration & Organizational Change
• CCT 601 Critical Thinking
• CCT 651L Advanced Cognitive Psychology
• CCT 692 Research & Engagement Process
• CCT 616 Dialogue Processes
• CCT 693 Action Research for Change
• CCT 694 Synthesis Theory & Practice Seminar
• CCT 619 Biomedical Ethics
• Counseling 605 Principles of Vocational, Educational & Psychological Assessment
• Expected Graduation Date: 25AUG2016
1. Welcome, Roll, and Check-in
2. Story Time
3. Lecture
4. Interactive: Small Group Activity
5. Summary of Interactivity
6. Lesson Review
7. “The Charge”
So what topics would be needed in such a course?
(Plus a mid-term and final exam)
-- Philosophical Support Structure
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave
Lecture: “Out of the Cave and into a Wider World”
After taking this class, you can never fully go
back into the cave again.
--Philosophical Support Structure
The SPA Guys
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and a few more to lay a starting foundation.
Story: In the Vineyard
Lecture:
“Under the Olive Trees”
How do we learn to talk about reasoning, critical thinking, and decision-making?
--Philosophical Support Structure
Maslow, Darwin, Calvin, Wittgentein, Kahneman, Einstein, Theory of the Meek
Story: The Driving Lesson
Lecture:
“Actualizing Yourself:
Where are you now? Where do you want to be?”
• You make different choices depending on where you are on the pyramid, how your brain processes, and other very human
functions.
--Philosophical Support Structure
God/god, Hume, Schopenhauer, Herodotus, Patricia Churchland, Rousseau, Socrates,
Mencius
Story: Ring of Gyges
Lecture:
“Why Be Good?” • Is there a point in the whole scheme of things if I choose
good or bad – or even make no choice at all?
--Philosophical Support Structure
Religion, Ethics and Morals, Virtue, Solipsism, Bentham and Utilitarianism, Wollstonecraft, Kahneman, Tversky,
Introspection Illusion
Story: Prison in Vietnam
Lecture:
“How To Build a Solid Foundation” • How can we find, strengthen, change, or/and
plan a solid foundation?
--Philosophical Support Structure
Prejudice, Social Cognition, Bias, Pascal’s Dilemma, Kant’s Categorical Imperative,
Hilary Putnam’s Words & Environment, Are people responsible for their implicit
biases?
Story: Which Bags are Yours? Which Bags are Mine?
Lecture:
“I Don’t Have Bias… or Do I?” • Can we take an honest look at our process of thought, or is it
just safer, easier, or/and better to just turn a blind eye?
--Philosophical Support Structure
Logic Modeling, Robert Ennis, Matthew
Lipman, Arthur Schopenhauer, getting to
the “Base.”
Story: Le Penseur
Lecture:
“Philosophy, Critical Thinking, & Reasoning” • Why think critically?
How do we learn to think critically?
--Philosophical Support Structure
Kant, Plato, John Searle, Edward DeBono,
Csiksgentmilhalyi, Creative Modeling, August
Comte’s Positive Philosophy, Dweck
Story: A Thousand Answers
Lecture:
“What Color Hat Are You Wearing?
• Are there just a couple of pathways? Are there a thousand? How can I click into the creative thinking side of me when I
need to make a critical decision?
--Philosophical Support Structure
Derrida, Wittgenstein, Searle, Austin,
Scharmer, Bohm, Russell, etc.
Story: American Airlines Flight 173
Lecture:
“Listening, Speaking, Thriving Conversation,
Socratic Dialogue, & Generative Dialogue”
• We can’t make good decisions if we don’t know how to listen, speak, have conversations, look for truths,
and seek answers.
--Philosophical Support Structure
Is/Ought Problem, Avicenna of Persia, Francis Bacon’s Knowledge is Power, Hume, John
McDowell’s Is there a question at all?
Story: Myths, Legends and Tall Tales
– Lecture:
“Asking the Right Questions and Listening to the Answers That You Actually Get
(as opposed to the answers you want.)” • Continuing on from the last session, more about how you gather
information on which you try to make better decisions…
--Philosophical Support Structure
Lecture: “Now that We Have The Information We Need,
What Next?” • Having a good foundation, having good information, and having
critical and creative skills are great, but how do you put them all together to come up with an answer(s)?
--Philosophical Support Structure Realitivism, Aristotle’s Egregious Errors of spontaneous Generations, Descartes’s
What Can We Know For Sure, Spinoza’s Deductive Reasoning, Leibniz’s Sufficient
Reason, Nietsche’s Guilt, Hypatia’s Level’s of Reality, Popper’s Falsification
Principles, de Beauvoir’s Gender Bias, Chalmers’s Property of the Mind
Story: “O” Rings and Things
Lecture:
“Nothing Comes from Nothing” There are so many competing views! What’s the right answer?
How can I sift through them all? Or if I learn about them now, will they be in by subconscious forever, nudging me in better directions?
--Philosophical Support Structure
Daniel Kahneman, John Stewart Mill’s Can you
have it both ways, Pascal’s Wager to be safe
either way, Burke’s All that is necessary…idea.
Story: Polaroid
Lecture:
“Seriously, What Are My Options Here?”
If you grow deep roots, you are more steady. But that doesn’t mean the perfect option always magically reveals itself to you.
So how do you evaluate options in a thoughtful way?
--Philosophical Support Structure
Distortion of the Framework, Time, False Efficiency, Mulla Sadra, Fredrich Nietzsche, Michael Goucault,
Time, etc.
Story: The Rain, the Soil, & the Trees in Southern California
Lecture:
“Conditions on the Field” In times of stress and duress, it is easy to fall back into patterns
that are less critical and creative. How can you hope to function well in traumatic situations – whether they are
traumatic just to you, or a wider crisis?
--Philosophical Support Structure
As mentioned in previous lectures.
Review of above topics in preparation for the
mid-term examination.
Lecture:
“Building a Scaffolding”
Class #16
--Philosophical Support Structure
Thales of Miletus – The Most difficult thing in life
is to know yourself.
Story: The Curious Case of Phineas Gage
Lecture:
“How Does My Brain Work When I Decide?” • In deciding, it helps to know how your brain works, what
helps your brain, and what hurts your brain.
--Philosophical Support Structure
Grameen Bank, Kant, Derek Parfit’s Who Am I Today, Saul Kripke’s There are True Statements, Kant, Bentham, Berkeley, Native American Philosophy
Story: “Little House on the Prairie”
Lecture:
“Finding the Right Answers: A Process” Depending where you are in the world physically, the
backgrounds (cultural, religious, etc.,) are taken into account, you may be reading the situation entirely wrong. Can you put a
worldview into your life?
--Philosophical Support Structure
Meditation, Peirce’s Battles and Consequences, Aquinas’s Just War, Spinoza’s God or Nature, C.S. Lewis’s Rational Discussion, The Bhagavad Geeta’s One Decision
– One Choice.
Story: “Mere Things”
Lecture:
“Here’s How We Are Going To Proceed” Trying to get everyone on the same page so that you can make a better
decision, let alone implement and sustain that decision takes an understanding by everyone that the world has changed, and they must
change too. And here are the ground rules.
--Philosophical Support Structure
Irving Janis, Csikszentmihalyl, Feist, Religion, Cults, Family,
Neighborhood, The Computer Age, Social Norms, Rousseau’s Man is
born free but everywhere in chains, Cornel West’s Race Matters.
Story: Kennedy & The Bay of Pigs / Kennedy & the Missies
of October
Lecture:
“Who Do You Listen To?
The Voice in Your Head, or the Voice from the “Gang.”
There are all sorts of external pressures to make “your own” decisions based on what is really the decision’s while you are consciously or
unconsciously in the cave. What can you do to make your own choices?
--Philosophical Support Structure
Burton, Sandel, Socrates, Guru Nanak Dev, Thomas Paine’s
Common Sense in an Age of Reason, Sharmer’s
Communications, Neerja Raman’s Solution’s vs. Conflict.
Story: Follow the Money
Lecture:
“Hitting the Books, Hitting the Streets”
Sometimes, to make a better decision, you must do the work it takes to get to the real answers. That means doing the research, on the street,
in the library, in person, on the internet, etc.
--Philosophical Support Structure
Maslow’s Wants vs. Needs, Rawls’s Veil of Ignorance,
Santayana’s Impulse, Hobbes.
Story: The Fire Jumpers
Lecture:
“Getting Down to the Nitty Gritty” In the end, it’s the little details that get lost. How can you avoid the pitfalls that are either so large you miss them, or so small, you can
barely notice them?
--Philosophical Support Structure
Fuzzy Sets, Utilitarianism, The Aliens, Russell’s Analytical
Philosophy, Lao-Tau’s Harmony with Nature, Sun Tau’s The
Art of War, Adam Smith’s The Invisible Hand, Kinsey & West’s
Moral Arguments
Story: The Monte Carlo Simulation
Lecture:
“Best Case Scenario” Economics, Psychology, Business, the Military, Conflict Resolutions,
Math, Game Theory, and what is best?
--Philosophical Support Structure
Epicurus, Satre, Buddha, Machiavelli, Thoreau,
Hannah Arendt’s The Banality of Evil, Goldman
Story: Donald S. Frey
Lecture:
“Hell Can Be Other People”
What is good? What is bad? Psychopaths and Saints. When we have no final control over the behavior of others,
why bother at all?
--Philosophical Support Structure
Michael Sandel, Susan Haack, Dharma’s What is
Right?, Rawls’s Theory of Justice, the Introspection
Illusion, Evaluation, Judging.
Story: The Great Venture
Lecture:
“Dark Side of the Moon” If you make bad decisions, what happens? What is Justice?
What is the right thing to do when faced with an impossible situation?
--Philosophical Support Structure Sophia’s The Dark and the Hidden, Xenophanes, Camus’s
Absurdist, Levinas’s Intersubjectivity – How do we relate to each other on a core level? And is Free Thinking Free from
Downs, Sartre, & Singer
Story: Funeral, 1988
Lecture:
“In the Silence and in the Noise – What is and What Is Not Being Said?”
Secrets and Lies. We have a right to our own private thoughts, so when does a secret destroy? When is everything just too absurd? When do
we know it’s time to deal with issues at a core level?
--Philosophical Support Structure
Hume’s Proofs, Goldman’s Anarchy, Rawls’s
Entitlement, Creative Forms, Martin Heidegger,
Peter Senge and the 5th Discipline Field Book
Story: Red Emma
Lecture:
“Models of Thinking” Looking deeper into the models of Critical Decision Making and testing
them out. Are they are helpful, and if so, how?
--Philosophical Support Structure
Beauty/Ugly, Sin/Choice, Art/Crap, Us/The, Lucretius’s
Swerves of Fortune, Hegel’s Reasonable, True, Rational, Carl
Marx’s Economic structure, Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution
Story: The Myth of Sisyphus – The Stone and the Hill
Lecture:
“In a Crazy World, What Can I Do?” With all the paradoxes, phases, and ever-changing landscape, how and
why do better decision matter?
--Philosophical Support Structure
Austin’s Performative Utterances, Is Self-Identity Logically
Consistent, Voltaire’s Disagree/Fight for Your Right, Sandel &
Bernstein’s Righting Past Wrongs, Discrimination vs. Membership
Story: I Do.
Lecture:
“Creating Your Own Life,
One Decision At A Time” Your decisions create the tale of your life. Are you willing to deal with the real-life consequences of your decisions? Even when they affect
others negatively?
--Philosophical Support Structure Moore’s Goodness, Confucius’s Hold faith and sincerity as first principles,
Leibniz’s We Live in the Best of All Possible Worlds, James’s The Greatest
Use of Life is To Spend It, Schweitzer’s Reverence for Life, Ponty’s Mind
and Body, Donald Davidson’s The Principle of Charity. Daniel Dennett’s
Who am I, Cornel West’s Real World Issues.
Story: Where is the Exit?
Lecture:
“Bring On The Rain” When you open yourself up to the world, you expose your mind, heart and will to an audience sometimes ready to eat you alive. What is the worth in a worthwhile life?
--Philosophical Support Structure
Cornel West’s Real World Issues, Daniel Dennett’s “Who Am
I?” and all the foundations learned over the past half-
semester.
Story: Being and Somethingness
Lecture:
“Making Better Decisions:
Where Do We Go From Here?”
Final Exam
The Final Charge…
And thought, Wow!
6.) On Class Day:
Bring or wear something purple to class.
(Examples: A shirt, a pen, a troll, a piece of hard candy…)
Approximate Time Needed to Accomplish: 1 minute
(Your total homework/prep time: 28 -30 minutes.)
I look forward to seeing you on Monday!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwOCmJevigw
With thanks to Professor Luannee Witkowski, and my creative classmates: Amy, Angelica, David, Eileen, Erin, Mare, Stephen,William & Wipa
Taught by Professor Arthur Millman. Thanks a billion to an amazing on-line and in-class hybrid group of fellow students!!
Thanks to Professor Davis and my amazing classmates!
• Reflections on my journey
Artwork by our fellow UMASS CCT Masters student: David Kooharian
I might have
started off a
bit naïve…
And believe
me… I’ve
been ready
to throw
everything in
the trash the
night before
a term paper
(or two
or three)
were due…
Looked at the mess that was now my office…
and blessed my husband, children, and friends
for being so patient!
But I’ve been blessed
with Boston…
To learn anew what it means to be a “Class”
Photos courtesy of my
friend Karole Foreman’s
husband, Peter Zokosky.
• To all of my UMass Professors, and my amazing world-wide
fellow classmates who have been a special part of my quest!